Wix Tinkering

Unlike a conventional Punk website, I have instead decided to opt for a minimalist look: A plain-ish background with a simple black and white colour scheme, with the addition of yellow to make the navigation pages stand out. As you may have noticed, the record complany "Anna-Key" is a combination of my middle name and "key" as in music--the pun sounds a lot like "Anarchy": Puns are important...for comedy value and a reference to Macro friends' genre. The title is white, atop a black background. I did this in order to make it look like the name was taped onto the website in a rustic fashion, like a post on a prick wall.

I am not entirely happy with the pictures of the band and may replace them with the cover of the band's new album or the music video at a later date.

Also for the background, I have recently see this picture of mexican masks hanging on the wall and would like to do the same with my band masks--perhaps in a strip on the right hand side.

On this page, I have yet to change the about second. perhaps one day something witty we be in the place of the Wix default text.

The Merchandise page will display a large number of products, all at ridiculous prices: Pretty commonplace on your average rock website. How else are you going to stick it to the man without official merchandise from a manufactured punk band?

The gallery pictures need to be added to: i would like to perform another photoshoot and also take some pictures of stage venues and fake gigs.

The social links to twitter, blogger and 8tracks are all actual links, but ones that I have yet to make. Also on the bottom bar are tour dates and the address of Anna-Key Studios

Sub Pop Records WIP

Sub Pop is a record label founded in the '80s by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman in Seattle, Washington. It was the first record label to sign Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney. Many and most bands on the music scene from the late eighties to early nineties on the Seattle music scene. They're well known to be one of the fair few to popularize the grunge genre; they still grasp onto critical and commercial success: modern bands including Fleet Foxes, Foals, Flight of the Conchords, and The Shins. 49% stake of the label now belong to the Warner Music Group (one of the big six production companies). The label are famed for their blunt letters to aspiring artists who they decline signing to their label: notes open with "Dear Loser".

[IMAGE OF SUB POP RECORDS]


This record label earns millions annually: not exactly your average indie punk record label, but still the company keeps up this image.


With this in mind, I decided to make my record label a parody of Sup Pop records. The simple black and white logo is also pleasing to the eyes, and I shall try to incorporate this into my final logo for the website.

Jimmy Jazz Records WIP

Jimmy Jazz Records, an independent record label from Poland, release mostly punk rock, ska, psychobilly and hardcore music artists. zine Except for records Jimmy Jazz sells clothes and other merchandise for the bands that they promote.

The image of a man in a mohawk drinking whilst another man - bold - leans on the same lamp post. Punk, Ska, Reggae etc. are written around the circular image, and also around the name of the label 'Jimmy Jazz'. As far as logos go, this one is very complex--but it is clearly identifiable as a punk rock record label due to font information and imagery. Therefore, effective.

editing

Due to the fact that I've lost the motivation to film after so long of a hiatus, I have instead turned my focus to editing

Photography

Band photo at school, near the RAC building. The members are leaning on a skip, whereas Summer is sitting (due to the fact that she is short and the height differences of the band are ridiculous).

Second photo of the band at school, looking sideways (except for Dylan); background is a yellow brick wall. They all look to be moving, representing the energy of '|Macro Friends'' music.

Taking at school, outside the playgroup. 'High voltage' song could be a reference to their 'edgy' music.

Dud photo; Summer unfocused. Still, the messiness of the photo ties in with the rock genre.

Texture taken from the bumpy texture of my laptop touchpad.

Close up of my orange shirt.

Frosted glass of landing window: outside is a brick wall. 'Icy' look may look better colorised blue or desaturated.

Another image of frosted glass from a different perspective.

Bare brick wall of old kitchen. 'Beauty in decay' and very grungy, tying into the rock genre and its subversive reputation.

Another image of a more dilapidated part of my house. Orange bricks, yellow plaster and peeling wallpaper. I my used this image as a semi-transparent overlay.

Bare brick wall and central window of my house's outside toilet. Messy paint and bare wires. The brick texture would be useful for an album cover or a web page.

Close up shot of a spider, suspended on its web alongside the murky, plastic window of my shed. Creepy and abstract; I like the colour scheme of brown and beige, and the contrasting patterns.

Wooden crates and old fences that will probably end up on our fire in the winter. They reminded me of the debris in the skip from the first image of the band, and are also reminiscent of urbanism and a junkyard; somewhere the band may perform or sing about.

A shot of the grassy floor with a fallen branch in the corner. Why not?

More firewood. I liked the different colours of the block and the blend that they had with one another.

The faded label of my dustbin. Red contrasting against grey; it also looked 'run down' and befitting punk.

A shot of the patio floor and the corner of our green house skeleton (the glass has been removed). Metal and concrete are typically associated with urban music and rock - as opposed to pop and electro, which have a cleaner, minimalist feel.

Treeline of our garden and a clear-ish sky (clear for Kirby at the very least)

Close up image of a dirty bird bath. The side of the water is only just visible in front of the red algae. I liked the colour - and the fact that it looks like the surface of an alien planet.

Close up of rotting lily pads and dead grass on top. More decay. I like this shade of vibrant green also.

Close up of a rusty saw on a wooden work bench. Reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails' album 'The Downward Spiral'.

Another close up of the saw: this time, of a whole in which the saw is usually hanged upon. Bit of a cobweb can also be seen.

A pretty picture of pretty flours with a red filter added on in the editing process of GIMP

Peeling paint on our shed door. Blue and black is a colour scheme that you don't usually see with punk bands: It's more for RnB and dance music.

Close up shot of hose brick work and cobwebs. More chipped paint and bare wood.

Image of the light bulb in our outside toilet. I really like the colour contract and the amount of light and focus I managed to get on the bulb.

Corner of the outside toilet: a popular hang out for spiders' webs and pubes. Also grimy and befitting the genre.

Cigarette tray in the outside toilet with boosted colour contract add after the editing process.

A shot condensation on my bedroom window: Could be useful for a texture overlay, or if the colours are inversed, a night sky.

Close up photograph of Summer, perhaps useful for an about page for the band.

Quite an intense shot of Danny scowling at the camera. Very befitting of the punk genre.

Dyal posing, high angle. Possibly useful for a propaganda-esque band poster.

Black and white version of the top images, inspired by the back image of Good Charlotte CD cover.

Freak Kitchen | Freak of the Week

The band are performing in a set location of what appears to be a studio. Black and lava-like interior. Lots of soft, low lighting. Their stage turns into a kicking bull.

Director/Artist: Juanjo Guarnido; ex-Disney artist and comic book illustrator, evident in the music video's cartoony aesthetic

Thought Beats: Music is a contrast to music video: Completely subversive of the animated music video genre. Instead of there being a narrative, the video is solely performance based.

Visuals to Lyrics: The visuals actually have nothing to do with the music video, save for the word freak perhaps tying in with the clip of freak shows. The song talks about the online community--specifically sites such as youtube and vine, where stupid people film themselves doing stupid things for online popularity. That being said, transforming the band into loveable cartoons is just as narcissistic as trying to skateboard.

Technical Aspects: Obviously, most of this has been achieve with editing software and flash. The cartoon animation is seamless. I'm in love and a little confused as to how Juanjo has managed to make a heavy metal band look like Disney princes.

Mise En Scene: Costumes are befitting the heavy metal genre, as is the dark and dingy set: Black and orange are the main components of the colour scheme.

Star Image: The performers seemed to have been transformed into cartoons. As well as this, circus-like posters are scattered about a wall showing members of the band, as though they are performers.

These cartoon versions of the band have inspired me to perhaps create a digipak or an about page on the web site in a similar style.

Patrik Budenz

(IMAGE: PLACEBO ONCE MOE WITH FEELING)

Patrik Budenz is a German photographer who chooses to capture a broad range of subjects, be they alive, dead, whole cities and even drag racers.

 Here is a picture of a deceased woman, pale and sickly apart from the vivid scar down her chest post!autopsy; there are also bruises and blotches, less in focus for savour of her smooth skin and pale lips This could be the comment on death that Patrik is talking about: In this day and age, nobody wants to think about the ugliness of death and would rather romanticise the life of this woman by only capturing her pale lips damp, porous skin.

Here is an image of the sallow skin of a dead man's foot: toe tag visible. The image almost needs to be double took due to the fact that the deceased's skin look more like a leather, or an object as opposed to an actual human being. The contract -and assimilation - of the metal table offers a reflection of the cadaver. Death seems to be sterile, clean and minimalist.

However in this photograph, we are reminded that dying isn't the prettiest, and neither is the embalming process. A pale hand is set beside a bloody background: the colour contrasts metaphorically showing how the life of this individual is being drained from him. Red connoting passion. I would like to replicate this with paint.

Inside the cremation chamber, Budenz has taken a picture of a skeleton which has recently been cremated--well, so recent that it's still being cremated. The intensity of the flames and the barely-visible bones lulls the viewer into a false sense of security due to the fact that one may think that this is just a typical autumn photograph of a warm and welcoming fire, when in fact a body is being destroyed. The vivid flames also ties into the energy that my song possesses: perhaps I could try to replicate this image by taking photographs of a fire (without a body, perhaps).

Only the top of someone's head can be seen in this image. In the foreground a lab coat can be seen on the peg-line of the lab, which makes this image neither morbid, shocking or minimalist. It's actually very clinical but also very warn due to the fact that there is a higher saturation of warm colours such as beiges and oranges, which was not seen in the prior images of the corpses.

For both my digipak case and my website, I decides to use aspects of what I had seen from these images: Skin, sterility and a human figure in order give my punk album a 'posh punk' style.

In order to do this, I covered different parts of my both with white paint t make myself appear deathly pale (and I had a butt load of poster paints left from making the band masks). After that, I fiddled with the focus of my camera to create odd macro compositions.

In this picture, I took an image of my risk for a 'clean convas sort of skin pattern which could be used as a basic background on a web page or a digipak tile.

After than I took a close up image of the side of my right eye, rolling it backwards to make it appear as though I had dead, milky lenses. I also made the camera focus on the eyelashes as opposed to the cheeks or the nose.

I then took a picture of the side of my neck, focusing the lens on the nape as opposed to any other part in order to give the image some depth of focus. It's not my most favourite self-portrait, simply due to the fact that my 'stache and rough skin are obscenely visible. Still, it's an interesting texture, and would work well for the enter page of my website.

After that, I took a low angle picture of my face, as though I were lying down, and made sure that my eyes were hollowly focused in one direction (which isn't that hard - I'm a day dreamer). The nose and the right cheek are the main focus as opposed to the eyes, which the audience should focus on as an afterthought due tot he nose being aligned with the rule of thirds.

Finally, here two pictures are of my hands: covered in blotchy bits of paint. In the top image, I tried to which move my hand in order to make the image less visible. However in the bottom one, I specifically tried to capture the rough pattern on the inside of my hand.

All of the images that I have taken will be manipulated on GIMP, to be used for the website and digipaks.